Column: Loki and the Resistance

Pagan Views

Right now’s providing is by columnist Luke Babb. Luke is a storyteller and eclectic polytheist who primarily works with the Norse and Hellenic pantheons. They reside in Chicago with their spouse and a small jungle of houseplants, the place they’re learning magic and group constructing – typically even on objective.

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Loki, god of the sure and silenced, god of the hidden and the misplaced, god of resistance in any respect prices, hear our prayers tonight. Mom of monsters, take care of your youngsters because the winter descends, and grant us the power to endure.

– edderkopper, November 10, 2016

The prayers crammed my social media for weeks- hundreds of reblogs, dozens of various devotees, however all sharing a theme. “Assist me,” they stated, “I have no idea find out how to battle this. I have no idea how I’m going to endure this.”

For many people, the 2016 election introduced with it a really actual worry of demise. Entry to healthcare within the queer group is a tenuous factor, at greatest, and nearly all of the Heathens I do know who worship Loki are queer. As a pacesetter with a transparent and said aim of withdrawing rights from minorities took energy, we scrambled to safe identify modifications, solidify the authorized rights of our companions, hook up with our buddies who have been in probably the most hazard.

We additionally raised our voices in prayer. The geographically scattered strands of my group, the one group of Heathens I had discovered that I felt I might belief, reached out, writing devotional items, reminding one another that it’s potential to remain alive, it’s potential to face the top of all issues, it’s potential to endure and nonetheless survive.

We stated we might all make it via this one. We lied.

* * *

Right here is one thing I consider: there isn’t any ‘right’ studying of a textual content.

It takes three issues for a narrative to journey – the author, the textual content itself, and the reader. The author, impressed by the world round them and the best way they see it, units down a narrative within the clearest phrases they’ve obtainable to them. The factor they create, the textual content, stays in that unique state because the world round it modifications. The which means of phrases shift, languages cross on, entire fashions of the universe fall out of favor. Then, the reader comes with a completely totally different worldview, and applies that worldview to the textual content. This implies, primarily, that the reader is developing a brand new story of their head which is said to, however can by no means be, precisely the story the author meant. Some interpretations of a textual content may be, maybe, “higher supported” – based mostly extra intently on the worldview that the writer lived in, or a better studying of the phrases they wrote. However there isn’t any approach to actually entry no matter unique which means the writer meant. There isn’t a studying that’s ‘right’, factual, unrefuted. There are as many good readings as readers.

That is true, to some extent, of each sort of communication. Whereas I really like my spouse, and we’ve spent hours and weeks of our lives explaining the ways in which we expect, the ways in which we see the world – on the finish of the day, I’m all the time interacting with the understanding of her that I’ve in my head. Not being psychic, I can’t know the precise which means my companion is making an attempt to speak as a result of that which means has to undergo phrases, expressions, tones of voice – all of which have limitations. Nevertheless shut we could also be, we have no idea our companions as they know themselves. We simply understand how we learn the textual content of them.

Equally, my coworkers have no idea the identical Luke as my associate does, nor does my instructor. I’m, as all of us are, a being greater than one particular person’s understanding – as a result of no one is round to learn all of my alerts and listen to all of my ideas besides me. I, like Whitman, am giant, I include multitudes.

How rather more so the gods?

There’s a theological level to be made right here that has been made higher and extra completely by extra gifted writers than me, however the essence of it’s this – the gods, in my estimation, are greater than individuals. They’re understood in sides. The face that one follower will get is not any much less actual than one other, nevertheless overseas it might be. We will spend lifetimes attending to know them, meditating on the various totally different ways in which they’re, and nonetheless by no means have an entire understanding of even a single deity.

That is how I perceive individuals whose interactions with Loki appear overseas to me. They speak about a laughing, fey, redhead – and I’m glad for them, and ask them to inform me some extra. My patron is called a form changer even among the many gods, prepared to make use of any software that may get the job achieved, and I really like listening to concerning the instruments he has put to make use of. “What does he appear to be for you?” I ask, in a lot the identical tone I ask about shared buddies. “Which model do you get?”

In Norse literature, the faces of the gods have their very own distinguishing names. Trendy Heathens have coined new ones to go together with the previous. Mom of Monsters, we name him, when he’s easing us by means of the ache and worry of persecution, the betrayal of our personal our bodies. Flamehair, the laughing one right here to interrupt down partitions of security that we is perhaps trapped behind. Laufeyjarson, who I consider on the street with Thor, the unlikely big killer, the explorer of the unknown. All of us get a unique mixture of names, a special side of the entire that’s our shared god.

And there’s Worldbreaker. Everyone knows Worldbreaker.

“Völuspá – Intro to Ragnarok” [Anker Eli Petersen, public domain.]

I say all of that to say this: Every part they are saying about Loki is true.

He’s a cheat. He has murdered, seduced, and manipulated the gods themselves. He privileges practicality over honor, and each of these a great distance over consolation for himself or his followers. He breaks each rule that’s introduced to him, and some extra which might be so ensconced in custom that they don’t even must be spoken. He is likely one of the main movers within the apocalypse.

I’m very clear about this. I can’t make excuses in my worship, won’t draw back from the darker points of my patron. I’ve appeared immediately into the painful, bloody mess of a mouth sewn closed and smiled again, bloody tongued. In Loki I see a god that I can perceive, a god that is aware of what it means to lose a household and endure for decisions that have been, for us, inevitable.

I’m conscious of the unspeakable elements of my patron – and so, whereas I disagree with Karl Seigfried’s current interpretation of the mythological textual content, and with the Troth’s coverage towards hailing Loki, I’ve no want to argue with them. Others have finished that work. What I’m excited about is answering the query that’s, I feel, on the coronary heart of every of Loki’s myths:

This can be a dangerous state of affairs. How can I flip it into an excellent one?

* * *

I’ve spoken somewhat about Loki up to now.

It’s simpler to inform tales of the methods the gods intervene – the unusual man on the nook, the half-heard phrase in a crowd, the collection of coincidences that has modified the best way I feel. What I lack phrases for are the methods a god can get inside, can shore up my weakest factors and type a trellis that modifications the blueprint of my progress.

Discovering Loki was not a religious expertise, for me. I used to be not visited in a imaginative and prescient, was not referred to as to him by way of divination or dreamwork. I used to be in class, taking one class in Previous Norse and one other in medieval concepts of femininity. I wrote a paper. I translated an extended part of Lokasenna, pulling up article after article about argr and ergi, delighted on the concept of queerness being the basis of magic.

I simply liked him. And in return he destroyed my life.

This isn’t an fascinating story, partially as a result of so many various variations of it have been advised. I started to work with Loki and my relationship died a (lengthy overdue) disagreeable dying. My profession path crumbled. Over the course of three years I got here out twice, moved to a different state, and suffered probably the most intense melancholy that it has ever been my misfortune to personally grapple with. I discovered myself, for the primary time in my life, completely with out solutions, struggling to seek out something on the planet that made sense.

Right here is the sample of it. Discover a Pagan. Understand that they’re Heathen. Work out whether or not they’re a white supremacist, a homophobe, a transphobe. Work out whether or not they’re accepting of practices that don’t match their very own. After which, solely then, hassle making an attempt to determine in the event that they’re alright with Loki.

I stay within the third largest metropolis within the US. If I collect everybody within the space who I do know acknowledges my patron, we will sit at a big desk in a restaurant.

So nothing within the current arguments is shocking to me, and even novel. I’ve heard these arguments because the second I began on this path. They don’t change my studying of the myths, the conclusions of my scholarship, or the reality of my spiritual experiences. Loki is the rationale I’m a Pagan, and I might not have managed so properly as I’ve with out him, wild and delightful and providing hope that issues would ultimately make sense.

I’ve been provided the selection between a group and my patron a number of occasions. It has by no means been a troublesome determination.

Loki, from an Icelandic 17th century manuscript [public domain.]

However I don’t assume I ought to have to decide on.

Maybe it’s a privilege of mine to return simpler to the information that folks can maintain elementary variations and nonetheless break bread. Maybe I ought to maintain endurance and area for many who can’t grasp that a god they worry can supply solace and friendship to others. However I’m indignant on the methods by which individuals dismiss the experiences of minorities as illegitimate. I’m uninterested in being informed that I need to erase part of my id – my gender, my partnership, my faith – as a way to match extra comfortably into the bulk. I’m sick of being informed that I’m incorrect about who I’m, and I’m enraged that my anger is used as some extent towards me.

I had taught myself to not be indignant by the point I used to be sixteen. It took me years to recollect how. I can’t hand over such a useful gizmo, however I’ve thought lengthy and onerous about easy methods to mood it, the right way to direct it and talk round it most successfully.

In making an attempt to succeed in a conclusion, I’ve realized that Loki’s anger very seldom strikes him to violence. As an alternative, it drives him to persevere. By way of menace and punishment, via bodily and psychological torture past any I can think about, Loki retains going.

* * *

We aren’t helpless. We aren’t hopeless

What are you going to do?

Struggle at your aspect, Worldbreaker.

–,bloodroot-and-bliss, November 10th, 2016

I’ve discovered many classes from Loki – classes of tearing down buildings that had stored me from progress, classes of defining my very own id, classes of making a household and remaining fiercely loyal to them. There’s, I feel, a lesson on this as properly – or many, as many as there are readers of this textual content. Certainly a few of them might be higher than mine.

In my very own gnosis, the lesson seems like this. The Heathen group shouldn’t be the primary place the place I’ve been unwelcome due to who I’m – however right here I’m reminded that being unwelcome doesn’t imply that I’ve to go away. Leaving means turning into invisible, surrendering my voice, forgoing any duty I may need to level out uncomfortable truths. Leaving lets those that disagree with my existence really feel vindicated.

Typically the suitable factor is sticking across the group – even once I comprehend it’s going to be disagreeable.

Le fête d’Aegir [C. Hansen, public domain.]

If you wake, world a blur,

The hearth is out. On the ashes waits

The stone you threw yesterday.

Luster misplaced fossil coal, a air purifier —

Decide it up. Rub ash into your arms

Your face, your hair.

A blessing to your self.

This place would be the middle of you,

Hearth ever burning. Strategy from the timber.

He’s sitting, again towards you.

It was by no means like this, no log, no shadowed eyes,

No worn palms to wave you shut.

It can all the time be this manner. You selected this

The toughest street, the binding

Ropes, the axe, the howling in your chest.

-Luke Babb, beforehand unpublished, 2/14/18

The views and opinions expressed by our numerous panel of columnists and visitor writers symbolize the various diverging views held inside the international Pagan, Heathen and polytheist communities, however don’t essentially mirror the views of The Wild Hunt Inc. or its administration.